Dear Animation Nationers, For those not familiar with our Miracle Mouse hand-drawn 2D animated feature project, we have been working on it since 2004 when we started a small Wisconsin-based animation studio comprised of (mostly) ex-Disney and Warners artists. The intent at that time was to do our small part to try to revive 2D features which were being phased-out in favor of CGI computer animated features. A few new 2D features came and went since then, but it seems that with a lack of broad appeal in the story department, these films failed to do much in the revival of 2D. Since this "labor of love" was being financed by a home building business, when the economy went bad, we had to down-size to survive. Since then, we have been slowly , but surely, making headway towards our ultimate goal. I want to thank Charles and Animation Nation for being an unofficial,unintended part of the production in ways they may not really know. This helped in the connections of artists I have made over the past many years, the ability to get news(such as this)out to the animation community, and recently, I came to know about Kickstarter through this site. As of last night(Friday) and after about a good month of preparations, we have assembled ourselves now into a postition of "going live" to start our crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter , hopefully, in the next few days time. I say hopefully, because while we filled-out all of the items they requested, they do have to review and approve the project to be funded. So, we are praying and keeping our finger's crossed. As for what we have been up to in recent months with Miracle Mouse, Cranky's Miracle, I think most of the regular forum visitors alrady know that we brought aboard Oscar winning actor legend, Ernest Borgnine to play the role of our lead, Cranky Crane. This ws Ernest's last acting performance before passing just a few months ago. We did have to conduct a wide search to try to find a voice actor who could match Ernest's distinct voice. we had several scenes yet to be recorded and several re-dos needed. A month or so ago, we had a session right here in Milwaukee with the iconic voice impersonator, Rich Little. He did a very good job and wanted to do this as he was a friend of Ernest's. We also were able to use a connection to secure the voice talents of the popular (star of Glee) Jane Lynch, as well as Veronica Cartwright who has appeared in The Witches Of Eastwick, Hitchcolks/The Birds, and the original Alien movie. The audio tracks for dialog, our own original music, as well as temporary scratch music is likely to be completed before the end of ths year and all is sounding wonderful. Lastly, we are coming to our first CTN Animation Expo this coming week in Burbank California. I do hope everyone who is an Animation Nation fan stops by and says hello. We will be bringing along staffer John Celestri(long time industry animator) and a talented Miracle 2D student/intern Michelle McCammon. We are even taking a small detour to arrive near Emmeryville to visit Pixar on this Wednesday, before driving to set-up our booth in Burbankon Thursday. We have also brought-in several industry animation professionals to work for a week in our studio and to "plus" their ideas inot a braintrust on the project. In doing this, we found and now have partnered with animator Scott T. Petersen's Utah studio, Golden Street Animation. They too will be at the Expo, right acorss the aisle from us! We will be premiering the first animated seqeunce(work-in-progress) footage of a key Ernest Borgnine dramatic scene. With any support at all, and a little bit of luck, we will one or several steps closer to attempting to bring back 2D to the World of feature theatrical movies.

Looking forward to the Kickstarter campaign Tom. We've been following the Miracle Mouse project for many years on AN through highs and lows and it's still moving forward. You're not only its producer but an artist as well and an amazing one at that. Most folks don't realize that. I'd like to see your own talents showcased more when the campaign gets going as well as the rest of the story behind the project.